Major life stressors, especially those involving interpersonal stress and social rejection, are among the strongest proximal risk factors for depression. In this review, we propose a biologically ...plausible, multilevel theory that describes neural, physiologic, molecular, and genomic mechanisms that link experiences of social-environmental stress with internal biological processes that drive depression pathogenesis. Central to this social signal transduction theory of depression is the hypothesis that experiences of social threat and adversity up-regulate components of the immune system involved in inflammation. The key mediators of this response, called proinflammatory cytokines, can in turn elicit profound changes in behavior, which include the initiation of depressive symptoms such as sad mood, anhedonia, fatigue, psychomotor retardation, and social-behavioral withdrawal. This highly conserved biological response to adversity is critical for survival during times of actual physical threat or injury. However, this response can also be activated by modern-day social, symbolic, or imagined threats, leading to an increasingly proinflammatory phenotype that may be a key phenomenon driving depression pathogenesis and recurrence, as well as the overlap of depression with several somatic conditions including asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic pain, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and neurodegeneration. Insights from this theory may thus shed light on several important questions including how depression develops, why it frequently recurs, why it is strongly predicted by early life stress, and why it often co-occurs with symptoms of anxiety and with certain physical disease conditions. This work may also suggest new opportunities for preventing and treating depression by targeting inflammation.
Mental Stress and Cardiovascular Health—Part I Vancheri, Federico; Longo, Giovanni; Vancheri, Edoardo ...
Journal of clinical medicine,
06/2022, Letnik:
11, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Epidemiological studies have shown that a substantial proportion of acute coronary events occur in individuals who lack the traditional high-risk cardiovascular (CV) profile. Mental stress is an ...emerging risk and prognostic factor for coronary artery disease and stroke, independently of conventional risk factors. It is associated with an increased rate of CV events. Acute mental stress may develop as a result of anger, fear, or job strain, as well as consequence of earthquakes or hurricanes. Chronic stress may develop as a result of long-term or repetitive stress exposure, such as job-related stress, low socioeconomic status, financial problems, depression, and type A and type D personality. While the response to acute mental stress may result in acute coronary events, the relationship of chronic stress with increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD) is mainly due to acceleration of atherosclerosis. Emotionally stressful stimuli are processed by a network of cortical and subcortical brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, insula, amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus. This system is involved in the interpretation of relevance of environmental stimuli, according to individual’s memory, past experience, and current context. The brain transduces the cognitive process of emotional stimuli into hemodynamic, neuroendocrine, and immune changes, called fight or flight response, through the autonomic nervous system and the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis. These changes may induce transient myocardial ischemia, defined as mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia (MSIMI) in patients with and without significant coronary obstruction. The clinical consequences may be angina, myocardial infarction, arrhythmias, and left ventricular dysfunction. Although MSIMI is associated with a substantial increase in CV mortality, it is usually underestimated because it arises without pain in most cases. MSIMI occurs at lower levels of cardiac work than exercise-induced ischemia, suggesting that the impairment of myocardial blood flow is mainly due to paradoxical coronary vasoconstriction and microvascular dysfunction.
•Robots can be used for physically demanding and dangerous production work, thus reducing the possibility of worker injury.•We find that increased robot exposure is associated with better physical ...health outcomes for workers in China.•We also find that increased robot exposure is associated with worse mental health outcomes for workers in China.•Our findings linking robots to health outcomes for Chinese workers suggest that robots affect workers in developing countries much in the same way as they do in developed countries.
The rising adoption of industrial robots is radically changing the role of workers in the production process. Robots can be used for some of the more physically demanding and dangerous production work, thus reducing the possibility of worker injury. On the other hand, robots may replace workers, potentially increasing worker anxiety about job safety. We investigate how physical and mental health outcomes vary with exposure to robots for manufacturing workers in China. We find a link between robot exposure and better physical health of workers. However, we also find that robot exposure is associated with more mental stress.
Abstract
Aims
Mental stress substantially contributes to the initiation and progression of human disease, including cardiovascular conditions. We aim to investigate the underlying mechanisms of ...these contributions since they remain largely unclear.
Methods and results
Here, we show in humans and mice that leucocytes deplete rapidly from the blood after a single episode of acute mental stress. Using cell-tracking experiments in animal models of acute mental stress, we found that stress exposure leads to prompt uptake of inflammatory leucocytes from the blood to distinct tissues including heart, lung, skin, and, if present, atherosclerotic plaques. Mechanistically, we found that acute stress enhances leucocyte influx into mouse atherosclerotic plaques by modulating endothelial cells. Specifically, acute stress increases adhesion molecule expression and chemokine release through locally derived norepinephrine. Either chemical or surgical disruption of norepinephrine signalling diminished stress-induced leucocyte migration into mouse atherosclerotic plaques.
Conclusion
Our data show that acute mental stress rapidly amplifies inflammatory leucocyte expansion inside mouse atherosclerotic lesions and promotes plaque vulnerability.
Graphical Abstract
This study provides novel mechanistic insights into how acute mental stress fuels vascular inflammation and promotes plaque rupture. EC, endothelial cells; HPA, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis; MACS, macrophages; SAM, sympathetic-adrenal-medullary axis.
Are the self-employed more stressed than the employed? Current research on entrepreneur stress are mixed. We utilize the age-adjusted telomere length to test the influence of human capital on ...self-employment and stress. Data from 3,580 adults in the 1999-2000 and 2001-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey were fitted to a theoretical model. Our findings support previous studies showing a positive relationship between self-employment and psychological stress. Moreover, we find that job tenure strengthens this relationship, implying that the self-employed who experience mental stress may find it challenging to recover the longer they have been self-employed.
In this study, we investigate the relationship between stress and flow-experience with the help of psychophysiological arousal indicators. Whereas recent studies suggest a positive relation between ...flow and physiological arousal, so far nothing is known on the relation between flow and high arousal in response to a salient stressor. We here suggest that the relation of flow with sympathetic arousal and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis activation follows an inverted u-curve rather than a linear function: moderate physiological arousal should facilitate flow-experience, whereas excessive physiological arousal should hinder flow. In order to experimentally stimulate high physiological arousal, we exposed 22 healthy male participants to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. Then, participants had to perform a complex computer task for 60minutes and to rate their flow-experience on the Flow Short-Scale directly after task completion. During the experiment, cortisol samples were taken every 15minutes, and heart rate variability measures were assessed by continuous electrocardiography. We found an inverted u-shaped relationship of flow-experience with indices of sympathetic arousal and cortisol, whereas parasympathetic indices of heart rate control during stress were linearly and positively correlated with flow-experience. Our results suggest that moderate sympathetic arousal and HPA-axis activation and possibly a co-activation of both branches of the autonomic nervous system characterize task-related flow-experience.
•We investigated psychophysiological processes of flow-experience under stress.•Flow showed an inverted u-shaped relation with HPA-axis activation.•Flow showed an inverted u-shaped relation with indices of sympathetic arousal.•Parasympathetic activation was linearly and positively related to flow.•Possibly a co-activation of both branches of the ANS facilitates task-related flow.
Mental stress is one of the serious factors that lead to many health problems. Scientists and physicians have developed various tools to assess the level of mental stress in its early stages. Several ...neuroimaging tools have been proposed in the literature to assess mental stress in the workplace. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal is one important candidate because it contains rich information about mental states and condition. In this paper, we review the existing EEG signal analysis methods on the assessment of mental stress. The review highlights the critical differences between the research findings and argues that variations of the data analysis methods contribute to several contradictory results. The variations in results could be due to various factors including lack of standardized protocol, the brain region of interest, stressor type, experiment duration, proper EEG processing, feature extraction mechanism, and type of classifier. Therefore, the significant part related to mental stress recognition is choosing the most appropriate features. In particular, a complex and diverse range of EEG features, including time-varying, functional, and dynamic brain connections, requires integration of various methods to understand their associations with mental stress. Accordingly, the review suggests fusing the cortical activations with the connectivity network measures and deep learning approaches to improve the accuracy of mental stress level assessment.
Although social support buffers stress and helps individuals to embrace challenges (exploration), individuals often experience stressors when close others are not proximally available to provide ...support. The current research tested whether imagining supportive touch from a romantic partner promotes exploration and buffers stress better than imagining verbal support or control imagination tasks. Participants completed a 5-min imagined support manipulation prior to experiencing a physical stressor, the cold pressor pain task (Exp. 1) or social/performance stressors, the Trier Social Stress task (Exp. 2). In Experiment 1, participants who imagined touch support experienced pain-buffering benefits compared to participants who imagined verbal support, and women who imagined touch support were more likely than women in other conditions to accept the challenge of a more difficult cold pressor task. In Experiment 2, participants who imagined touch support were more buffered from the stress of the socially-evaluative tasks and viewed these tasks with more enthusiasm than participants in all other imagination conditions. Potential mechanisms and implications are discussed.
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•We assigned participants to supportive or control imaginations before stress tasks.•We compared two supportive imaginations: touch and verbal support.•Imagined touch buffered stress and pain during the tasks better than verbal support•Imagined touch support also buffered stress better than control imaginations•Participants who imagined touch expressed the most enthusiasm about the tasks.
Background Mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia is a frequent phenomenon in patients with coronary artery disease and is associated with a greater risk of future cardiovascular events. The ...association between chronic symptoms of psychological distress and mental stress-induced ischemia is not clear. Methods and Results We used a composite score of psychological distress derived from symptoms of depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, anger, and perceived general stress. Participants underwent myocardial perfusion imaging with both mental (public speaking task) and conventional (exercise or pharmacological) stress testing. Overall, 142 (15.9%) patients experienced mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia. After adjusting for demographic factors, medical history, and medication use, patients in the highest tertile of psychological distress score had 35% higher odds of having mental stress-induced ischemia compared to those in the lowest tertile (odds ratio OR, 1.35 95% CI, 1.06-2.22). Stratified analyses showed that the association between psychological distress score and mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia was significantly associated only within the subgroup of patients with a prior myocardial infraction, with patients with a prior myocardial infarction in the highest tertile having a 93% higher odds of developing myocardial ischemia with mental stress (95% CI, 1.07-3.60). There was no significant association between psychological distress and conventional stress-induced ischemia (OR, 1.19 95% CI, 0.87-1.63). Conclusions Among patients with a history of myocardial infarction, a higher level of psychosocial distress is associated with mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia but not with ischemia induced by a conventional stress test.
Background: Living conditions are becoming challenging day by day. Mental stress on individuals is increasing due to multiple reasons. As mental stress is a major cause of mental illness, it must be ...detected at the earliest to prevent serious conditions such as depression and anxiety. Purpose: The focus of this study is to detect the exact location of the source which causes such damage. In this article, we analyse the mental conditions of subjects under a workload of performing mental arithmetic calculations for various frequency bands and plot the topography to understand the areas of active potentials. Methods: We propose a Novel Cluster Ensemble Verifier (CLEVER) algorithm, which combines two different techniques: clustering and source localisation. The proposed algorithm is highly efficient in identifying the exact location of the source. It is seen that the topographic plots of the independent component analysis (ICA), which has the maximum percentage of relative variance, correlates to the cluster generated. We are able to give the percentage-wise contribution of every component which is responsible for brain source activation with less time complexity. Results: Out of 72 subjects, in 67 subjects, 299 out of 433 components originate from the occipital and parietal areas of the brain with a maximum power of 43.5 µv 2 . As an example, the relative variance of one component is found to be contributing up to 74.03% to source activations. Clusters show similarity across the subjects in the parietal and occipital areas of the brain. The dataset used for experimentation is EEGMAT from Physionet’s repository. The computation time for the algorithms is 17.6 ± 3.2 minutes. Conclusion: Findings show that during mental arithmetic calculations, both occipital and parietal areas of the brain are involved. As the data is acquired by orally mentioning the mathematical problem, subjects tend to visualise the numbers while finding the solution, which is reflected in the occipital area of the brain. CLEVER algorithm verifies the origin of the activity in the occipital and parietal areas of the brain.
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